She was rigged as a barquentine. Her three topmasts were housed, and she was hove-to under the lee clew of her close-reefed topsail and a small storm-trysail. She was being flung about in a manner that was absolutely appalling to look at, at one moment standing almost upright, and anon thrown down on her beam-ends at such an extreme angle that, to the onlookers, her decks seemed to be almost vertical. Yet, with it all, she was making better weather of it than her bigger sister, for though the spray flew over her in heavy clouds, she seemed to be shipping very little green water. Still later, they passed something that had the appearance of being a capsized junk, after which they sighted nothing more; and on the following morning, with sunrise, the gale broke, the sky cleared, the wind softened down and finally shifted; and by the afternoon the north-east monsoon was again blowing, and nothing remained of the gale save the turbulent sea that it had knocked up. The same evening saw them abreast and about ten miles to the north of the island of Tagulanda, and twenty-four hours later they sighted and passed North Cape, on the island of Moro, and swept into the great Pacific ocean. The weather had by this time again become all that the voyagers could desire. The sky was of a beautifully clear, rich blue tint, flecked here and there with thin, fleecy, fine weather clouds; the monsoon swept down upon their port bow in a cool gush, redolent of the exhilarating smell of the open ocean, a very life-giving tonic; and the long, low mounds of the Pacific swell, wrinkled with the sweep of the breeze, just sufficed to give life in a long, easy plunging movement to the hull of the _Flying Fish_, at one moment lifting her sharp-pointed nose and some twenty feet of her fore-body clear out of the blue, sparkling brine, and anon causing her to dive into the on-coming undulation until she was buried nearly midway to her superstructure. About mid-afternoon they passed a small island that lay some half a dozen miles to the northward of their course, and about half an hour before sunset another and still smaller one was sighted, almost directly ahead. As usual, every glass in the ship was at once brought to bear upon it; for, despite the ever-fresh and ever-changing beauty of sea and sky, a break in the monotony of it is always welcome, and even such an object as a barren rock becomes interesting. "Mildmay, do you notice anything peculiar about that island ahead?" asked Sir Reginald, when he had been peering through his binocular for a minute or so. "Looks to me, very much like a wreck of some sort upon it," remarked Lethbridge. "It is a wreck," said Mildmay; "the wreck of a small craft--apparently a schooner. I have just been looking at her."